Louis Joe Sainsbury is an artist filmmaker, writer and activist based in London and Brighton, UK. His work is a collection of experimental film, 3D installation, performance, music and publication, and is primarily in discussion with post-human philosophy, existentialism and temporality. Working with DV, VHS, Super 8, 16mm film, photography and web sourced video, recently Louis’ work has moved to a base of the formal relationship with stasis, spatial realms and ecological socio-political philosophies; creating gallery work and visual essays.

Whilst in residence, Louis Joe Sainsbury will continue work on his piece VISIONS, an open dialogue on the Anthropocentric aesthetics of the English agricultural field. VISIONS acts as an attempt to create both an ethically critical magic narrative and also a tribute to an ideological understanding of Nature in its last days.

The English agricultural cow is the ultimate 3D image. An image and signifier reduced to the degradation of low capital culture - i.e. chocolate box paintings, blockbuster 3D action films… yet this novelty signifier is still a serious tool of industrialised farming/cinematic production. Reduced to prison-like tropes in which explosions and death permeate the screen, the cow is held prisoner within a frame. At the moment of its release from the bounds of the 2-dimensional constraints, the cow is inevitably slaughtered. Re-exposed and regenerated for capital gain, the 3-dimensional image is hidden from exterior sight outside of the farm; yet always alluded to. Alike to the cumshot of Gaspar Noe’s Love (2015), the death of the cow is the ultimate release and shameful end to some re-occurring grotesque horror, a body monstrously evolving into benign, obtuse and innocuous actions. The cow thus exists as an affectation of 3-dimensionality. In this sense, the cow exists within a frame and yet once released the cow is destroyed. An image put out of its 2-dimensional misery; into new bounds of only an illusory freedom.